Renfroe

Michigan Outdoors - Hidden Places

In Michigan, being outside could mean comforting on a beach or getting lost in the wilderness. Among the hidden places described below allow you to do both. Here are three places that you've not noticed in magazine articles and guide books. Michigan Outdoors - Waters It is possible to move the Manistee River from Baxter Bridge (the next crossing down from Hwy 131) north of Cadillac, all day without seeing a house or even a street. Nearly all the path is in the Manistee National Forest, where you can camp without permits. The Manistee is not a lake filled with exciting rapids (at least not on this stretch). It's a river for relaxing. A couple of years back, we used to park where Road 17 crosses the river, and walk upstream with a tiny day pack loaded with string, water, a saw, hatchet, and snacks. By morning we'd create a raft of dead trees cut to size. We spent the next hours floating back to the car. We called it Tom Sawyer Day, and on six of these trips I have never passed another canoe or boat on the lake. Michigan Outside - Beaches Probably you have heard of or been to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore (and the dunes), and another remote locations over the east side of Lake Michigan. They are lovely, and I recommend them, but imagine if a beach is wanted by you to yourself? Head north, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. From Highway 2, a couple miles east of Rapid River, turn south on County street 513. Follow it until it splits, and just take the street to Wilsey Bay. It is a public access point, where in fact the road first involves the water. Leave your car or truck here and walk a mile to the end of the road, and then across the rocky beach past the final home (keep below the high-water mark and it is legal to walk past personal property). Just past the house you enter the Hiawatha National Forest for another eight miles of beach. The final time I camped out there, I never saw a person in two days. I used clean black bear tracks along the sandy beach, and later explored the ruins of an old cottage one morning. There are no roads in to this place, and ATV's aren't permitted. If forested wilderness is wanted by you, just disappear from the beach - and if it is August or September observe for wild blueberries in the forest clearings. Michigan Outdoors - Actually Hidden You'll want a topographical map because of this one. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, north of Ishpeming, there is some wild and difficult country. Driving out of Ishpeming, you'll wind through rocky lakes and woods. An hour or so north, on a sandy road, you'll come to a lake with two-hundred foot high cliffs on the other side. I promised friends never to get more certain than this, so you'll have to work a bit to get it. Keep on a bit more, until the road gets too rough or the puddles too strong. Park the car and look for a wood to cross the small lake on, then head uphill your hands may be needed by you to increase the wooded hillside). Beyond and at the top of the cliffs and slopes you can find two ponds, only a thirty minute leave, surrounded by way of a rocky wilderness, and without any trail going to them. My brother had a trout on the line in five seconds the very first time I took him there. Good luck! cpr my career